While working as a journalist in India in the early Eighties, I had been staying in Udaipur and had arranged to attend a rally to be addressed by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, in a forest some miles away. I set off in a hire car, but after a few miles the driver began singing and the ancient Ambassador started weaving from side to side. It ran into the ditch and stopped. The driver, obviously very drunk, moved into the passenger seat and fell into a deep sleep.

I decided to continue the journey myself and took the wheel. But I did not know that he had put his lunch - a sloppy curry wrapped in a chapati - on the driver's seat. The only gear that worked was second, and the brakes didn't work at all. A police jeep pulled up alongside me and the policemen offered to take me to the rally. But I was unable to stop the car. 'Drive it into the verge,' I was advised. I was then told to leave the driver to sleep it off and was taken to the rally. When it ended, I drove back in style in the PM's motorcade - trying all the while to hide my back view, as I had been sitting on the curry and was wearing pink trousers.